Benet Casablancas at Musicadhoy

Posted by Redacción on February 19, 2008  |  Leave a comment

The in its 12th edition, Musicadhoy, a season of contemporary music held in Madrid, dedicates a monographic concert to the Catalan composer Benet Casablancas, the most recent winner of the Catalan National Music Prize for composition. The concert focuses on his chamber music, with a programme featuring: “Movement for Trio”, “Two Pieces for clarinet and piano”, “Impromptu” -Trio No. 2-, “Passacaglia for solo violin” (WORLD PREMIERE), “Tríptico”, for solo cello, “Cant per a F. Mompou -remembrança-” for cello and piano, “Haiku para Trio” and “Introduction, Cadenza and Aria”, for violin, clarinet, cello and piano. The works are performed by the Trio Kandinsky (Corrado Bolsi, Amparo Lacruz, Emili Brugalla) with the clarinetist Salvador Salvador, from Proyecto Gerhard. The concert takes place this 6 March at the National Auditorium in Madrid.

Release of Herminie by Arriaga

Posted by Redacción on February 19, 2008  |  Leave a comment

Herminie, cantata by the composer Juan Crisóstomo Arriaga, is the latest release from the Tritó score division. The work, composed in 1825, when the composer was 19 years old, has been revised by Jorge Sancho and this is the first time it has been done in an urtext edition, intended to reproduce the original intention of the composer as exactly as possible, without any added or changed material. The text of the cantata is taken from “Gerusalemme Liberata” by Tasso in the French version by J. A. Vinaty (1790 1830). In the arias and especially in the recitatives we find moments of great dramatic intensity, revealing a composer who employed skilfully the expressive resources of romantic drama, while the orchestra, despite the lack of trumpets or kettledrums, underscores and highlights effectively the expressivity of the singing, which demands a soprano who has both an aptitude for coloratura and great power. This work forms part of the obligatory repertoire for the 9th Cadaqués Orchestra International Conducting Competitionand is available on CD with the soprano Ainhoa Arteta and The Cadaqués Orchestra conducted by Neville Marriner.

The Orquesta de Castilla y León and Cadaqués Orchestra perform Shostakovich

Posted by Redacción on February 19, 2008  |  Leave a comment

The Orquesta Sinfónica de Castilla y León and Cadaqués Orchestra, conducted by Gianandrea Noseda, joined musical forces during the Ibermúsica season for a performance of Dimitri Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 4 in D minor. The performance, lauded by public and critics alike, is now available on CD from Tritó recorded at the Centro Cultural Miguel Delibes in Valladolid shortly before its inauguration last year. This symphony, one the Russian composer’s most important works, reflects in its passages the convulsive period of Stalinist Russia in 1936 and make the piece, in the words of Luis Suñén “protean, uncommonly moving, in which the life of a man appears utterly bared. This an extraordinary example of how true it is that music speaks for itself .” A rendition that balances the entire range of emotional elements in the work, from triumph to despair, outstanding both for the work of the Italian conductor and the teamwork of the two orchestras, which after having collaborated on previous occasions, record here together for the first time.

Premiere of “Diferencias” by Jesús Torres

Posted by Redacción on November 7, 2007  |  Leave a comment

The first concert of the season by the Orquesta de Cámara del Auditorio de Zaragoza “Grupo Enigma”, this 6 November in the Sala Luis Galve of the Auditorio de Zaragoza, features the Spanish premiere of Diferencias by the Zaragoza-born composer Jesús Torres. Commissioned by the conductor Ernest Martínez Izquierdo for Ensemble Barcelona 216, with the intention of premiering it at the 1999 Strasburg Festival, the piece was finally premiered in London, under the direction of André de Ridder with the Royal Academy Ensemble.

The title “Diferencias” refers to 16th-century Spanish music; without formal references, it is rather a homage to a period and style the composer admires, similar to what he does in the works “Glossa” or “Tiento”.

Jesús Torres‘ presence this autumn in the music programme of his native city is worthy of note: this past 28 October, the Trío Arbós presented in Zaragoza the piece “Trío”, dedicated to this wonderful ensemble. This 12 and 13 December see performances at the city conservatory’s Auditorio Eduardo del Pueyo of his “Cuentos de Andersen”, for narrator and chamber ensemble, premiered in Madrid last year.

Among his recently published works, we should mention “Presencias” for solo piano and “Chacona” for solo violin, both new additions to the Tritó Ediciones catalogue.

Premiere of Escenas del bosque, by Ramón Humet

Posted by Redacción on November 5, 2007  |  Leave a comment

This 3 December marks the premiere of the piano work Escenes del bosc (tercer quadern), composed for the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation as the obligatory work for the Olivier Messiaen de la Ville de Paris Competition, a work published by Tritó Editores. The concert will be held at the Cité de la Musique, Paris. The same piece, along with books 1 and 2, will be performed in Barcelona in a monographic concert on this 18 December at the Sala Beckett in Barcelona within the 4×4 season. The programme also includes the works Homenaje a Martha Graham (absolute premiere) and Vent de l’Oest (absolute premiere). The concert also features the presentation of the of the CD by the composer Ramon Humet Escenas del Bosque.

Tritó releases Alio Modo,by David del Puerto

Posted by Cristina Martí on October 30, 2007  |  Leave a comment

Alio Modo, the new release by the Tritó record label is a collection of some of most interesting chamber works composed between1995 and 2005 by David del Puerto (Madrid, 1964). The disc features brilliant interpretations by three of the most significant names on the Spanish contemporary music scene: the Indonesian pianist Ananda Sukarlan, the soprano Carmen Gurriarán and the accordionist Ángel Luis Castaño, all champions of the Madrid composer’s work. The CD includes the works: “Alio Modo” (piano), “Fantasía para acordeón”, “Cuaderno para los niños” (piano), “Diario” (accordion and piano), “Intrata” (piano), “Rondós” (piano), “Rejoice” (piano), “Sobre la Noche” (voice and accordion) and “Verso IV” (piano).

This is Tritó’s second CD by David del Puerto – after Boreas (2005), devoted to symphonic music – and is further evidence of the company’s ambition to create a recorded corpus of Spanish contemporary music.

Coinciding with the release of the CD, Tritó has also released the score of the piece “Diario” for accordion and piano. “Diario” is dedicated to Ángel Luis Castaño, who both premiered and plays the piece on Alio Modo. Very demanding technically, the piece demonstrates the vast potential of the accordion in contemporary music.

Premier of Escenas de pájaros, Ramón Humet

Posted by Redacción on October 15, 2007  |  Leave a comment

This 18 and 19 October, the Spanish Radio Television Orchestra, under the direction of its principal conductor Adrian Leaper, will premiere in Spain the work by Ramon Humet Escenas de pájaros, which won the last Reina Sofía Composition Prize from the Ferrer Salat Foundation. At the concert the president of the Ferrer Salat Foundation, Sergi Ferrer Salat, will present the Catalan composer with the prize. Also present will be members of the jury who decided the prize: Cristóbal Halffter, Jesús Rueda, César Camarero, the orchestra conductor José de Eusebio and the winner of the 2005 Eneko Vadillo prize. This work also won the first Oliver Messiaen Composition International Prize from the Montreal Symphony Orchestra. On the occasion of the award last January, the work saw its world premiere and the composer was commissioned to do another work for the Orchestra’s coming season. On the strength of these two important awards Mr Humet has received international commissions which give him an outstanding presence in the Canadian and French festivals. In addition to the commission from the Montreal Symphony Orchestra there is another from the Centro para la Difusión de la Música Contemporánea (CDMC) for the concert season at the Museo Reina Sofia Auditorium within the programme “Residencias”, by the renowned ensembles Trío Arbós and Neopercusión. Finally, he has received a commission from the Festival de Òpera de Bolsillo y Nuevas Creationes (Pocket Opera and New Creations) for the 2009/2010 season.

World premiere of David del Puerto’s 3rd Symphony

Posted by Redacción on September 17, 2007  |  Leave a comment

In its 15th year, Otoño Musical Soriano commemorates the centenary this year of the poet Antonio Machado’s arrival in Soria. For the occasion, the festival, directed by Odón Alonso, commissioned a work from the composer David del Puerto, according to whom it is his “most personal composition”, given the freedom he was allowed by a commission which dictated no scoring nor timing conditions. This is Del Puerto’s Third Symphony, subtitled “En la melancolía de tu recuerdo, Soria” (In the Melancholy of Your Memory, Soria). The author classifies it as a “dramatic symphony” due to the way it draws on cantata and theatre music. David del Puerto resolved the sole condition of the commission – to include texts by Machado – by choosing 19 poems that enabled him “to condense Machado’s life in Soria along one year”, and which are recited and sung along with the orchestral music. The texts reflect the poet’s varying moods over the seasons of the year, among which stands out summer, given that “the summer poems are the most heartfelt because that was the season when Leonor died”.

This is the first symphony in which David del Puerto includes sung and recited parts and, at once, the first of his large-scale works in which he puts to music poems written by someone other than himself. Nonetheless, it is a work in which the author has renounced deliberately the brightness of other pieces of his in order to capture and transmit better the sobriety and ascetism of Machado’s verse. The premiere takes place on 20 September, 2007, at the Auditorio “Odón Alonso” of the Centro Cultural “Palacio de la Audiencia” in Soria, with Enrique García Asensio conducting the Oviedo City Symphony Orchestra. The solo voices are the mezzo-soprano Elena Gragera and the soprano Carmen Gurriarán, with narration by the actor José Sacristán.   The score and CD of David del Puerto first symphony, Boreas, is already available from Tritó and we will soon be publishing his second, Nusantara, as well as the above-mentioned third. The most recent works we have published by this composer have been chamber pieces: “Dos dedicatorias”, for solo violin, and Seis estudios, for guitar, while forthcoming are Diario, for accordion and piano  and Advenit, for clarinet, violin, cello and piano.

The Archduke’s festival

Posted by Redacción on August 27, 2007  |  Leave a comment

This past Friday 27 July the music ensemble Vespres d’Arnadí, with the soprano Mariví Blasco and the actor Elies Barberà, premiered the production “La festa de l’arxiduc” (The Archduke’s Feast), a concert-performance which will soon be travelling to other festivals and venues. Based on pieces from the large amount of music created in the period of the War of Spanish Succession (1700-1714) selected and transcribed by the musicologist Josep Dolcet, the conductor Josep Lluís Guardiola wrote and directed the story of a fictional baroque feast put on by a Valencian aristocrat for Charles of Austria (Charles III).

But the defeat at Almansa and the subsequent taking of Lleida by the supporters of Philip V (1707) lead to the cancellation of the fiesta and the introduction of French influences alongside the Italian and Spanish styles of the first part of the production. The press has lauded this unusual initiative celebrating the three-hundredth anniversary of the two abovementioned historical events, and which was the centrepiece of the concert to honour the memory of Ernest Lluch organized each summer by the Torroella de Montgrí Music Festival, and which was preceded by the conference by Joan Francesc Mira on the historic context of the music heard in the production. Four of the works in the production are published or are being prepared for publication by Tritó: the 18 Anonymous 18th-Century Catalan Dances, Suite III by Charles Desmazures, the Overture from Dafni, by the Baron of Astorga; and Cantate sur la prise de Lérida, by Jean-Baptiste Stuck, which was performed for the first time since its rediscovery.

Jesús Torres premieres Poética

Posted by Redacción on July 25, 2007  |  Leave a comment

With the premiere of Manantial de luz, a work we spoke of here at the time, this June was already an eventful month for Jesús Torres, one of Tritó’s leading composers. In the words of critic Alberto González Lapuente, “it is surprising to discover that there are still audiences who get excited about a new score. Jesús Torres will have every reason to be happy (…) The enthusiasm with which his work was greeted is unusual. In a way, a real feat in an era that strives so to enhance the ‘communication’ with the public (ABC, 18-06-07).

Now in July, on the 28th to be precise, Torres premieres another piece: Poética. The venue is the Santiago de Compostela Auditorium and the occasion the recently founded Festival Cameralia, who commissioned the work. Poética is a composition for solo clarinet and piano trio made up of five movements based on readings of poems by five German-language poets: Novalis, Hölderlin, Rilke, Georg Trakl and Paul Celan. The premiere features José Luis Estellés, to whom the work is dedicated, with the young Italian ensemble DavidTrio.